[LadyDoc]

Go to link for the long article. And then go to the home page for a source of great art on the internet.

[Maceman]

From The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:

Art, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related as follows by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.

One day a wag—what would the wretch be at?—
Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT,
And said it was a god's name! Straight arose
Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows,
And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns,
And disputations dire that lamed their limbs)
To serve his temple and maintain the fires,
Expound the law, manipulate the wires.
Amazed, the populace that rites attend,
Believe whate'er they cannot comprehend,
And, inly edified to learn that two
Half-hairs joined so and so (as Art can do)
Have sweeter values and a grace more fit
Than Nature's hairs that never have been split,
Bring cates and wines for sacrificial feasts,
And sell their garments to support the priests.

[niteowl77]

All I know is that a lot of hideous crap brought a lot of money to a lot of people who weren't even close to being a patch on the butt of guys like N. C. Wyeth or Howard Pyle ("Horrors! Mere illustrators!").

[john in missouri]

It's becoming increasingly clear that the Emperor (20th century "art") has no clothes -- no substance, no nothing.

[SteamshipTime]

Bump and link to one hell of a speech.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

I'm bookmarking the page and this article. I went there and there was gorgeous art. If you do any more articles on art, please ping me.

[supercat]

I saw the ARC site a few days ago, and like it very much. I disagree with one of your cited author's points, though, to wit, that "Where-as, all of the great art in history is Art about life." While I would agree that almost all of the great art is about life, and much of the "art about art" is pretty awful, these statements do not always hold true, especially outside the medium of oil painting.

Especially in the medium of instrumental music, many of the great works aren't really "about" anything beyond themselves and the music expressed therein. What is Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in d minor about other than, well, d minor? And what is his Well Tempered Clavier about, other than a demonstration of how to write music to take advantage of the different intervals in a well-tempered scale? I rather like Chopin's Etudes, but am not aware of them being "about" anything in particular (though some of them sound like silent movie music, I don't think they were written for that purpose since the cinematograph had not yet been invented).

[TxBec]

>>>For the sake of our children, our culture, and posterity, the Art Renewal Center is dedicated to traditional humanist art, which is essential to the health and welfare of mankind..<<<

I enjoy art. I appreciate art. However, I think the underlined part is going a little overboard.

[Paul Atreides]

I know from experience that there are some people who have an intense, obsessive hatred for the traditional. They hate Christianity, traditional values, conservatism, etc. They are petty, bitter, small-minded, bigoted, condescending, arrogant, self-centered, and corrupt.

[x]

William Bouguereau, John William Waterhouse, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Leon L'hermitte, John William Godward, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Jules Joseph Tissot, and Frederick Lord Leighton

If they were all we had, people would be crying out for Matisse, Kandinsky, Mondrian and the rest of the moderns. Much of modern painting is vile or ugly or vapid. But just as there are other ways of decorating a room than heavy Victorian upholstery and other ways of building houses than Victorian gothic, so there are other ways of painting than ponderous Victorian realism. We would be much poorer without the impressionists, who took painting out into the open air, or Matisse, who brought the spirit of the Mediterranean into his work.

[monkey]

The retinal perspective of the Renaissance was understood, but not used, by ancient artists. Picasso, coming out of Lascaux, said "We have invented nothing."

Art changes, it swirls, but it reflects its time. It even peers into the future a bit.

[KateUTWS]

I am overwhelmed by the beauty that can be translated on to canvas. Since I was one of those "modernists" who spent years splashing blobs stripes and zig zags of paint on very expensive art paper I feel somewhat guilty for the debacle.

I have never seen the intense greens of Degas'The Dance Class. The sleeve on the painting of "A Roman Lady" looks like you can reach out and feel the silk.

These artists are supurb!

[PoisedWoman]

One of the problems is that big money "collectors" often do not have a clue about what constitutes art and really don't care. All they care about is market value. So if the leading "experts" drive up the prices of elephant dung on a shingle, the collectors blindly follow.

grlfrnd, I had an interesting walk thru the mod art museum in SF with my former billionaire friend...he had zero zilch aesthetic sense but knew the monetary value of many pieces there. A black-painted canvas with nothing else on it was the same to him as a Rembrandt, and he said so. Only the monetary value counts.

[Axenolith]

THAT is one of the best web sites I've seen in 10 years of internet poking around. Thanks for posting that article!